It was in the art of bidding farewell that poet and singer Wolf Biermann revealed his greatest talents. In a demonstration of personal greatness he left his home town of Hamburg at the age of 17 to become a citizen of the GDR. His public value catapulted to giddy heights when in the autumn of 1976, after a concert in Cologne's Sporthalle, he was told he would not be allowed back into the GDR. And a flicker of this greatness could be glimpsed again when he, now firmly established as the eternal dissident, broke with socialism in the 1980s and in the early 90s, when he revealed his hawkish streak, leaping to the defence of America's wars. Since then Wolf Biermann has faced problems on two fronts. One is the lack of anything worthy of an earnest farewell. The other stems from his being much better at farewells than arrivals – which is due in part to the difficulty of imagining an eternal dissident really arriving anywhere, even if he does pause in his wanderings briefly to hug a couple of reactionaries.

The CDU in Berlin wanted to make him feel as if he'd arrived when on his seventieth birthday last year they suggested this was a fitting occasion to make him an honorary citizen of the city, number one hundred and fifteen. This would put him up there with Heinrich Zille, Nelly Sachs, Anna Seghers, Wieland Herzfelde und Heinz Berggruen. The suggestion unleashed weeks of bickering among the city's politicians. The ruling Social Democrats are unnerved by any form of partisanship with the USA in war. The Linkspartei which is also in power has refused to issue any clear statements – but they could obviously never embrace the idea of an honorary citizen who never felt himself in any way indebted to the intellectuals of the GDR and the "critical solidarity" with which they accompanied his career in the West. [...]

But there can be absolutely no doubt that Wolf Biermann has earned every form of patriotic distinction going. When the GDR Politburo blocked the return of this one-time protege of Margo Honecker, on grounds of his "gross breach of duties as a citizen of the state" the fate of that very state was firmly sealed. From that point on, to a greater or lesser extent, the republic was opposed by its own intellectuals. And worse still: the Socialist state had demonstrated a singular lack of composure, and had shown what an easy target it was. Wolf Biermann cannot take credit for this. Yet to a great extent it was because of him that this happened so quickly, and that it happened this way. Because he was an artist. As a poet, he was a talented imitator of Heinrich Heine and Bertholdt Brecht, as a singer and speaker there was no figure more compelling in Germany at the time, and as a guitarist, he was certainly passable.

Wolf Biermann – cosy GDR boho goes militant. Narcissistic strutting stud and self-adoring rebel leaps up out of his armchair in Chauseesstraße 131 and, moustache bristling, starts barking and cooing at all things socialist. And the word springs up on the stage with him, the sung word, and in messianic tones proclaims the glories of the socialist utopia, cherry trees and sexual love. In no time at all, the masses are on fire, even if those masses live in the West. Nothing could have hit the GDR harder that the prophetic nature of Biermann's performances and records. And it hit harder still because Biermann did nothing to hide his sources of inspiration. His smooth but utterly affirmative approach to the great heroes of socialist literature leant his verse the immediate clarity of tones familiar.

Berlin's Social Democrats and Socialists want all this forgotten. Most of them can probably still recall the impression the words "You, don't be let yourself be hardened by these hard times" made on them. But they are not comfortable with the artful dodgings of the eternal dissident, nor probably with their own pasts. Yet the Biermann of today is the same as the Biermann of autumn 1976, only older, somewhat worn out, less beguiling, but strident as ever. Bernd Neumann, the state minister for culture, called the behaviour of the Berlin parliamentarians on Monday afternoon an "embarrassment" to the entire city. He was right. Because the last time Wolf Biermann was treated with such scanty aplomb was by the politburo of the SED.

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Thomas Steinfeld is a senior editor of the Süddeutsche Zeitung feuilleton.

This article originally appeared in German in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on 16 January, 2007.

Translation: lp